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Comment by morkalork | Hacker News Reader

WFH solves this too. RTO policies are anti-family. Hell, unchecked corporate work culture is part of why Japan and Korea's birth rates are so low. Can't be out having babies if you're at the office at all hours.

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I think WFH-RTO dimension is orthogonal to unchecked corporate culture. You can have a great work-life balance with RTO (I saw it at Google first-hand in 2010's) and you can have a shitty dawn-to-dusk grinder with WFH (saw it many times since Covid.

Tech companies wouldn't be offering their employees who are too busy to start families the perk of egg freezing if they offered "great work-life balance." They would be offering more flexible part-time work, so that employees could both have children and continue working, instead of putting off having children.

Companies with great work-life balance still offer egg freezing. It is simply an option to the female employees who want to work a lot and postpone childbearing. Having that option doesn't mean other employees don't have a great WLB if they want to go for that.

Case in point - Google (first hand experience).

But you can more easily live next to your parents with WFH then RTO; you don't have to move to where the jobs are, moving everytime you change jobs.

Even here in the US is tough. I have a "good" job as a developer. My wife still has to work to support a middle class lifestyle and make a median household income. She has to work my off-hours. Doesn't feel like that much of a family when we don't do family activities or have family meals. No wonder others don't want this sort of "good" life. The single guys I know are doing so much better financially and overall. Risk of financial ruin in divorcebor child support is a major factor in the US as well. Why take on that risk? If the environment is hostile, it's no wonder marriage declines, birth rate declines, etc.

Fully agreed! But it's not enough.

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